In 1999, I think right after the iMac came out in a range of colors, I happened to sit in on an internal meeting at Apple, one in a large theater filled with employees. Steve Jobs came out and the whole theater burst into applause, and the clapping went on for minutes, with people standing and cheering. The success of the iMac was just becoming evident – the first act of Steve’s big return, leading from there to what Apple is now.
Steve let the applause go on for a little bit, then, with much effort, settled down the crowd. When things got quiet, the first thing he said was: “That’s an awful lot of applause considering that you guys are the ones who do all the work.”
Have Relations With
I often hear from people that theirs is a ‘relationship business’, and that it therefore isn’t really susceptible to the influence of technology.
In my experience, there are two different types of businesses that are driven mainly by relationship: commodity businesses – where any choice is as good as any other – and businesses with terrible data – where people have no idea if any choice is better than any other.
In commodity businesses, perhaps that makes sense. If you’re buying crates of #10 envelopes – all roughly the same in terms of quality or price – you might as well buy from the guy with whom you’d like to have expense account drinks.
But in data-less businesses, the situation is far less sensible. A restaurateur stocks a given liquor due to relationship only because he can’t quantify whether his customers would more likely purchase a different drink, in a way that would yield better profits, customer satisfaction, or other ROI.
And, indeed, in the majority of professional or creative businesses – from medicine and law, to music, film, publishing, and fashion – where so many decisions are ‘relationship-driven’, I strongly, strongly suspect things fall into that second, less sensible, data-less relationship category. Decision-guiding data has already started showing up increasingly in those worlds; as the data trickle turns to flood over the next five years, those industries will start looking very different than they do today.
Coopetition
After ten years spent in the film world, dipping a foot back into the tech space has been a bit of a culture shock.
Tech people seem happy to help out even strangers at other companies, just for the good karma. Whereas in the movie world, even close friends secretly root for one another to fail, if just for the frisson of Schadenfreude.
I suspect that difference stems straight from the trajectory of the two industries: the tech space’s total market cap is growing rapidly, while the movie industry’s total grosses have held largely static.
In that context, it makes sense for film folks to resent the success of other players: in a zero sum game, others’ wins necessitate your losses. Whereas in a growth industry like tech, someone else’s achievements don’t inherently undercut your own.
In fact, as many tech companies and products benefit from [network effects](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect), others succeeding is likely even a net positive, a rising tide lifting all boats (or, at least, all valuations).
Which is to say that, for whatever reason, the large number of tech people I’ve been dealing with of late have all been remarkably nice. After a decade of dog eat Hollywood dog, it’s a welcome change.